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Archive for October, 2013

Last May I was asked by BBC History Magazine to nominate who I considered to be the best dressed person in history. Last week the public vote was counted and the winner got 48.5% of the vote, 4 times the amount of vote as second place. My nomination had been pretty obvious to me. This wasn’t something I had to rack my brains about; there is one that, for me, has always stood head and shoulders above anyone else. I can track my decision back to 1973, I was 12 and I went to see David Bowie at King George’s Hall in Blackburn. I can picture every bit of it to this day. He was there in all of his splendour, in his make-up, the changes of outfits, and I remember seeing the next day a combination of things that really turned me on to style and music culture in a big way. One was that he was banned from Blackburn for wearing little apart from a sumo wrestlers nappy type thing. I thought “Great! That’s how it should be done; I want to be banned from Blackburn as well!” I went out and bought the Aladdin Sane album, got a feather cut, stopped short of buying a giant nappy, but bought a big pair of yellow wide legged Bowie trousers – and that was the start of me buying records, going clubbing and it introduced me to the most stimulating and enjoyable things in my life being fashion, music, youth culture, dancing, socialising. It allowed me to enjoy a career in a sector, the Creative Industries, that is vital to Britain’s economy and which we lead the world in. Times my story by tens of thousands of people who held hands with David Bowie through his inquisitive journey through skiffle, mod, psychedelia, glam rock, funk, punk new romantic via avante garde film directors, exotic Japanese designers, comic books, art and design.

One of my favourite haunts as a teenager was a nightclub called Pips in Manchester, with its myriad of club rooms within a club. We would wander from the funk and soul room, to the punk room, and onto the Roxy and Bowie room. Bowie was with us in spirit. It is this love of opportunity, and the stimulating breadth of creativity music and fashion that youth culture has bequeathed us that influenced me to start our wonderfully successful Vintage Festival brand and like Pips, the many nightclubs that form part of every Vintage event are informed by the voyage of discovery that Bowie helped us all take.

A couple of years ago Gerardine and I were introduced to a chap whose name was John Orchard. His company Marchday had taken on the enormous, 2 million square foot, Paton & Baldwins knitting yarn factory in Lingfield Point, Darlington which was built in 1951. Rather than flatten the site and build a soulless new build, as is so often the case, Marchday lovingly and artistically started to bring these evocative mid century factory buildings back to life. Now there are over 2000 people working there for dozens of companies, a cool canteen, and nursery and now homes are being built in one of the open spaces on the site. We were taken aback by the attention to detail and couldn’t think of a better example of the upcycling of old industrial buildings in the UK. If it had been in London rather than Darlington it would be being used as an exemplar by Government agencies and the media. John Orchard said he could do with the world knowing about what was being achieved at Lingfield Point so that his vision of bringing the whole site back into productive use could be achieved. We talked about how holding a significant event on the site that reflected its ethos could do the trick. The concept of The Festival of Thrift was born, the first national festival that celebrated the fun that can be had on the cheap.

A wonderful team, mainly local to Teesside, was assembled by a festival director who shares our passion for sustainability, thrift and hard graft – the wonderful Stella Hall. Teesside PR agency Cool Blue rose to the challenge of proving the naysayers wrong in delivering media coverage for an event firmly aiming to be national and being held in a distinctly regional Darlington.

In the run up to the event most of the media I spoke to questioned if anyone would turn up and if thrift, upcycling and sustainability were just play things for a “yummy mummy” middle-class minority.

The team’s beliefs held firm. To us thrift isn’t about middle-class people making a lifestyle choice, it’s about enacting a real and positive change in the way that society acts and consumes. The generation coming through now is the first that is worse-off than their parents, yet we continue with a culture of mass consumption – having to buy the latest gadget, the biggest TV, new clothes every six months, often with the help of credit. We were clear that the Festival of Thrift is about challenging that attitude and showing that there is another way. This festival was to be all about demonstrating ways to this generation, and many generations to come, that there are ways to enjoy life without spending and borrowing on the scale of the past decades. Nevertheless we were still up against a culture where spending a small fortune on a bag covered in the logo of a French brand and coveting your next door neighbour’s brand new company car is still prevalent. Few would share my absolute pride and delight in the family Toyota Prius approaching 200,000 miles.

On the morning of the first day of the festival, September 21st 2013, the atmosphere was created by the cast of hundreds setting up, laying out their workshops. Their wares were uplifting but we still didn’t have a clue how many folk would turn up. The gates opened at 10.30 am and the public poured in, in their thousands. Over 25,000 people came and the weekend was an uproarious success.

The festival proved that ‘thrift’ isn’t just a flash in the pan. It’s a genuine response to the economy and the state of the world that is creaking under mass-consumption. This festival concept shows that people want to actively learn how to save money and the planet for a future generation. Thrift isn’t a ‘fashion’ thing among the middle-classes, it’s a change of attitude that transcends the class system. We knew that there are pockets of people who are already making changes and Darlington is one of those places. This festival was a powerful statement to send to everyone. Life isn’t about bling in the form of flash cars, big houses and overpriced clothes; it’s about values, about getting stuck in and enjoying creating the good things in life. Those good things can still feature great design and creativity. The Festival of Thrift was about having fun, getting more bang for your buck and working with others to get the best out of life without getting into serious debt.

The media were out in force on the first morning and the question of the festivals’ relevance to the wider community of Darlington and beyond was the generally the first one I was asked. None of us had to worry about this, all walks of life turned up. In an article by Kim Stoddart, The Guardian, she wrote a quote which was enough to warm the cockles of any event organiser’s heart:

“The place was teeming with families and young children, and yet despite my best efforts to find one, I was pleased to note there didn’t seem to be a Bugaboo buggy in sight. I think that, at the end of the day, you have to ask why any free event offering practical money-saving advice and ideas, five items of vintage second-hand clothing for a fiver, and free music and entertainment for the whole family, could be seen purely as the domain of the middle classes. It should be for everyone. As it happens, last weekend in Darlington it definitely was.”